Bose speakers are really not all they are cracked up to be. This isn't just by distinguished golden-ear "audiophile" standards but by nearly any standards. Bose spends tremendous amounts on new, flashy marketing campaigns and deceptive sales tactics, like jacking up the price in order to create the image of an "elite" product. In the "bass module" (they can't call it a subwoofer becasue it does not extend below 46 Hz) the construction is thin particleboard (not nice, solid MDF) and the bass drivers are 5.25" with short excursion, stamped frames, untreated paper cones, and foam surrounds that dry-rot away after 8-10 years or so. It is crossed over to a pair of cheaply-made satellite speakers at 200Hz which is way too high. In the speakers, which are the same as the 3-2-1 speakers, the speakers do not extend above 13kHz (minimum for "high-fidelity" is 20kHz), and the Bose signal processing screws with the tonal balance. You do not get the right balance of sounds, and sonic fidelity is trampled. They might respond better in the lower midrange than the Acoustimass cubes do (Acoustimass systems have a measured -10dB frequency "hole" between 280 and 200 Hz; every 3dB represents a doubling in loudness, for reference) but with the design fads and cheap audio tricks Bose has become known for, it is hard for me to have much trust in them. You would be happier just going with a 5-channel Klipsch ProMedia suround system (which is probably one of the best surround systems out there). The Bose Freestyle is probably an OK system by computer speaker standards, but you really pay the full home-theater price, which it is honestly not worth.
I will also say something about the apparent bass output you may have heard from your friends' Bose systems (and this is where it gets really technical): In order to extract that bass sound out of the two 5.25" woofers most of their bass modules have (some have three), they use an enclosure type called the Series-Tuned 8th-Order Bandpass. (This excludes the new Acoustimass and Lifestyle systems, which appear to use Decoupled Antiresonant Line designs, or they might just be "make the air volume really small and then stuff a really long port in there folded over a couple times so it looks to our consumers like we made it have the technology of the wave radio".) The 8th-Order Bandpass uses three chambers. The woofer(s) are mounted on a partition between the two rearmost chambers. Each of the two rearward chambers are ported to the frontmost chamber, which is ported to the outside. This enclosure design, patented by Bose, results in amazing output and smoothness of tone over the frequency range, but the side effect is that bass notes (especially during complicated bass passages in the music) sound "boomy" and indistinct. The 8th-order bandpass can only be used with small 4", 5.25", and 6" woofers. Larger woofers cause the designer to wind up with an enclosure the size of a refrigerator. Becasue of this woofer size limitation, the small woofers don't have that much deep bass output, and that is why many owners of these bass modules complain about lack of deep bass extension.
If a Bose system were given to me, I would keep it and probably listen on it occasionally. But I would not go out and spend my money on one. I bought a Cambridge Soundworks "Ensemble" mini-satellite/bass-module system that does everything the Bose does (and a few things it doesn't) for $50 on eBay. My main sound system (including associated source and amplification gear) cost me about $600 total, less than the cost of the Acoustimass 6. The difference is that mine has 450 watts of amplification, a true 10" 150-watt subwoofer extending all the way down to 25 Hz, main speakers that evenly cover the range from 50 to 20,000 Hz without intermodulation distortion associated with single-way speakers, a DVD player, and a 5-CD changer. It makes me happy.
Just for the sake of asking, who listed them as "excellent"? The Bose website?
To be fair, many intelligent people I know also used to think Bose was good. This simply comes from the fact that most people don't shop for speakers like they would shop for a TV or a dishwasher or a central A/C unit or a car. They don't do lots of research. They ask their friends. This is the marketing model that makes it easy for a marketing scheme (scam?) like Bose's to work well. If Bose can convice some people that Bose is awesome, the attitude will soon catch on with the general public. I imagine that there is actual engineering that goes on at Bose, but I am at a major engineering university, and many engineers who were oohing and aahing at the stuff Bose had at their booth for a job fair at the beginning of the semester were of the same crowd that I would expect to respond similarly to Bose marketing. In my opinion, they should not be working for a speaker company because I still feel they don't truly know what good sound is. One of them listens through an Aiwa mini-system, and in the case of another, the best speakers they currently own are in their late-model Honda Accord. Very decent for a stock system, but still limited in fidelity.
Also to be fair, some of the best-sounding midrange drivers in the world are made of paper. However, the world's highest-performance home theater subwoofer, the 15" Adire Audio "Tumult", uses a blend of paper fibers and Kevlar for its cone, not just paper alone. And paper tweeters do not have the proper pistonic qualities at high frequencies to put out quality, detailed highs.
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